Missing iron Unity

[Momus The Great]

Played several hours and have yet to find iron. Even when mining only find tungsten. Set the ores to very high and still nothing. Kinda love the game but this is almost unplayable.

[red51]

It's indeed difficult to find underground ores, mostly due to the lack of caves... the spawn rate is similar to the Java version, but it's hard to find the ores without caves... in the Java version, when caves were disabled, the game did actually spawn more than twice as many ores.
Now one could argue that caves are also kinda disabled in the new version (simply because there are no caves), however, if we spawn more ores now, this could cause issues in existing worlds once the cave update arrives (caves would be full of ore then)... it's a quandary...

We're still looking for a solution while avoiding the issue mentioned above.

But if you only find tungsten, do you maybe dig at very deep elevations? Iron doesn't spawn close to hell, so you will mostly find other ores there... but if you're digging close to the surface, there should be more iron than tungsten oO

However, when it comes to surface ores (the iron rock boulders), the spawn rate is indeed too low on meadows and coniferous forests. This will be fixed with the next hotfix ;)
However, you should be already able to find lots of iron ore boulders in decidious forests.

[Ten24-Khale K'itha]

I'm in the same boat. Have restarted a few times now and have yet to find a single piece of iron. Even with ore at the highest setting the one tungsten that I found so far had only 16 pieces in it and that took 3 hours to find. Surface ores is pretty much the only options because 98% of everything is gated behind making the workbench, which needs iron. Can't even start building a house as I have to do nothing but sit here for hours pounding rocks - literally. (This latest map I haven't even found any coal, for if I do find iron, and I started next to a large mountain range.)

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2883276164

I do understand the quandry of the ores issue, but I don't un derstand why the addition of caves wouldn't necessitate people to make new worlds, anyways, in this beta version. That's just how things work. I haven't found a single one of these iron rock boulders. In fact this newest map had a field of dirt with 80+ boulders in it, all within a 200ft radius and they were ALL stone. Definitely been waiting a while to try this new version, but getting disappointed real fast as I just don't have this kind of time to make 0 progress.

Ty for all the work on the game. :)

EDIT: I FINALLY found a single iron rock, but I had to swim for quite a while. Very strange that the spawn area, and a HUGE area around it, is effectively unplayable with the current setup, even on high ore settings. Unfortunately, it looks like this island was another mountain, and just had three rocks on it, despite the MASSIVE pine forest (None of the 3 I found were near the pines, they were near the shore). Still no way to use it without coal, so I guess I just keep swimming some more.

(An idea that might be worth considering is something that 7 Days to Die did. Surface rocks are indicators of nearby [very close] places that you can dig to find surface veins of ore.)

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2883276206
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2883276242
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2883276266

[red51]

@Ten24-Khale-K'itha: I understand the frustration =/ But the next hotfix will definitely improve that :) I guess the hotfix will be available tomorrow (there are still a few other issues we're working on, so it depends on how long this will take).

Currently the surface ore spawn only works correctly in deciduous forests...

Originally posted by Ten24-Khale K'itha:

I do understand the quandry of the ores issue, but I don't un derstand why the addition of caves wouldn't necessitate people to make new worlds, anyways, in this beta version. That's just how things work.

Well, many people don't want to start over again... back in the Java version, the introduction of biomes broke old worlds (they were still playable, so buildings could still be blueprinted, but the terrain was messed up). This resulted in a lot of backlash, so we really want to avoid to break worlds with future updates.

[physbo]

Stone tools or something primitive to help the process of moving to the next stage would be the middle ground.

[Graubart]

Best to look out for some sort of "mixed" (eg non-pine) forest biomes, I found loads of scattered Iron-boulders there, but nowhere else.

[Flyingwindmilltrees]

I found quite a bit (24) where mountains descended into a lake - two seams.

I used this (along with boulders from local environs) to make a sickle, and a hoe which was used to stop dependence on gathering of plants without seeds.

With potable water, shelter (hole in the side of a hill, with fire in front) and warmth I concentrated on spreading forests close to me - using saplings to make wood plentiful.

After this I had propagated enough food and wood, had water and shelter, that I was free to dig a downward a central corridor and lateral corridors, in a termite like fashion into a hill. Which I also lived in - with a primitive shelter and fire pit.

Along with surface ores - still enough to make an anvil (just), with the remainder used to make iron sheeting - for a lamp which I moved along the tunnel for light, as I progressed.

Then I had a mine that was yielding enough ore for far more than for mere survival - that only then, I stopped using my stone axe and started using iron pickaxes and axes - and begun to work on my first building project.

So, in short I used my ores I scrounged off the surface to make a sickle and hoe to generate stable food and put up with the slow nature of the stone one for a while - then moved on wards to better higher prospects like: exploring and construction.

[MustangMR]

I randomly went digging in various areas that started close to shore going downwards mostly. I found a good bit of iron, though I find more iron rocks above ground. So far I've managed to run across gold, coal and iron. Nothing else. The game does feel a bit like a scavenger hunt to find ore at this point.

[Ten24-Khale K'itha]

Was definitely able to find a lot more surface ore during this change, thank you Red. I haven't managed to find anything underground, outside of those first 16 tungsten, yet, but maybe eventually.

Small nitpick with the new "ingot cooling" system: If you sleep in a tent and fastforward time, just after turning off the forge, the forge is still cooling several "hours" later, when you wake up. :)

[red51]

Originally posted by Ten24-Khale K'itha:

Was definitely able to find a lot more surface ore during this change, thank you Red. I haven't managed to find anything underground, outside of those first 16 tungsten, yet, but maybe eventually.

Thanks for your feedback! Did you dig for underground ores at the same spot where you was digging before? In this case it could be possible that you were still in the same chunk - unfortunately chunks which have been modified before don't get updated, so the new ores only spawn in untouched chunks. A chunk has a size of 32 x 64 x 32 blocks btw (width x height x length).

However, it's probably easier to gather some surface ores first so you can craft a better pickaxe (which makes mining a lot easier) ^^

Originally posted by Ten24-Khale K'itha:

Small nitpick with the new "ingot cooling" system: If you sleep in a tent and fastforward time, just after turning off the forge, the forge is still cooling several "hours" later, when you wake up. :)

Oh, good point, I will put this on our to-do list :D